


The One He Could Keep

by I_llbedammned



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor - All Media Types
Genre: Babies, F/M, Gen, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-30
Updated: 2014-01-29
Packaged: 2018-01-10 13:03:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1160052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/I_llbedammned/pseuds/I_llbedammned
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All his life Loki has had his children taken away from him.  What will the much plagued Frost Giant do when he is allowed to have a child of his own and is left on his own to figure out how to raise it?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The One He Could Keep

Children. Loki was never sure if giving birth to children was more of a gift or a curse; he knew that he had certainly gotten no small amount of grief given to him after he had given birth himself. The act was painful, yes, but the end result was worth it. When he held his first children, Eisa and Einmyria, in his arms after his first wife Glut had given birth he remembered being confident that he would always be there to take care of them. He would be the father that would protect them and he would take care of them in a way that would make the fathers that had failed him ashamed for the way that they had raised him.

But he made the decision to leave them behind. At the time he had sworn he would come back for them, that once he had gotten power and could give them a better life that he would be back to take them to the life that they deserved. Somewhere along the way time had gotten the better of him though and their memory became something lost in the branches of Yggdrasil along with most of his past. He tried going back several years later to see how they were but they had vanished like so much smoke in the wind. .Sometimes late at night it would still stick in his memory that he had left them behind and he wondered if his daughters hated him now. The thought would turn around uncomfortably in his stomach, burning like poison.

When the children of his second wife, Angroboda, came into life he barely even got a chance to process life with them. He wanted to make it right, to actually be there for his children especially not that he had the resources to be able to care for them properly. But quickly as they were born they were taken away from him because of his monstrous nature. They were taken and locked away when they barely got to know him, and probably were tortured. Loki was told many times that he should have known better than to mate with a frost giant and that people like him should be without heirs. Even the son he birthed himself, Slepnir, was taken and used by the Aesir like they were entitled to have him. That's all people like him were good for to people like them, to be used when they were convenient and to be hidden away when they were not. Besides, Loki would never know how to take care of a child. What did he know of creation? He only existed to eventually destroy them all anyway. These messages were poured over him so many times that he almost began to believe them.

Then he met Jane while lost on Midguard and everything had changed. It wasn't that she had changed his life forever by her relationship to him, he knew that was she had with him was a vengeful tryst done to spite a brother of his that had abandoned her for months. When she had her child it was in secret, both from the Aesir and the mortal authorities. As far as anyone else was concerned the son was just from some guy she met at a bar and had a one night stand with, which he supposed was as much of the truth as they would be willing to process. Jane would tell her coworkers and his brother that she had given the child up for adoption and Loki would take them away to raise them. If anyone was to ask where he had gotten a child from, not that anyone would question him of all people, he would say that he had found it as a spoil of war- which again was not entirely a lie. He agreed that he would meet her with the child in a month to decide what to do about visiting rights and work everything out in more concrete terms.

But he had a child to call his own, which was more than he had ever been allowed to have or been worthy to have before. He should feel proud as he once did, but as he held the child in his hands he felt lost. The impulse to protect him was still there, but there was now an element of fear. There was the fear that his child would be taken from his arms or that his child would be killed merely for existing. He felt like he would break the fragile son he held in his arms just by holding him. The child seemed oblivious enough to his fear, cooing softly as he held it against his leather wrapped body and staring up at him with bright green eyes that seemed all too aware of what they were looking at. Loki wanted to smile at it, but he just ended up staring coldly at it. Gently he gave the baby over to the wet nurse that he hired so that it could be fed.

The rest of the incident passed without note. He ate dinner in silence, periodically punctuated by the crying of the newborn baby that would remind him of the creatures’ presence and the incredible burden that his father would bring to his life. He would get up to try and silence the crying and usually it was nothing. Occasionally he would need to change its diaper clothes or feed it one of the bottles that the wet nurse had left him. Normally such tasks would be far below him, but he was trying to keep this as quiet as possible and could not afford more eyes than were absolutely necessary to see it until he figured things out more. He sat down with a book and tried to forget about his thoughts.

But later at two o'clock in the morning he found himself wandering the house like a lost ghost searching for a purpose. He looked at the crib where the child lay, peering over the child's sleeping form. He knew that one day he would have to explain to this innocent form that he had a heavy burden upon him because of who his father was and that it was something that they would both have to live with even though neither of them had asked to be born into this society. He had no clue what he was going to do with this child, but it would be too much to abandon it on the side of a mountain. Guilt and self-hatred flooded his mind that he would even for a moment consider leaving his own child to rot on the side of a mountain like he had once been left.

"Hello there," he said, in clumsy stilted words to the sleeping figure. It shouldn't be hard to talk to a baby, but it was. With most people he could read what they were thinking, but babies gave no feedback.

Loki continued, "I know we both don't know each other very well, but we're going to have to make the best of it." He moved a toy to the child's side in an idle gesture, "The life you have will not be easy, it never is for us, but I will do my best to make sure that you do not suffer as I have."

As if on cue the baby began to cry in earnest. Loki picked him up and rocked him back and forth. The baby burped and began to calm down, trying to cuddle into Loki's solid form. In spite of himself he smiled down at the innocent form. 

He may not know what he was doing, he may not know where he was going, but he knew that it would be alright in the end. He would try to make it alright in the end. Perhaps he would try to take the child out, not to Asguard, but maybe to a place around Midguard where they could just blend in and his son could get a feel for the sun upon his face. They would figure this whole thing out, together even if it scared him. He would just have to disguise them both, lest they get caught and the child get taken from him once more as he was arrested for the incident in Manhattan.


End file.
